Tyra Banks Is Going to Teach a Class on Smizing at Stanford

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Next spring, Tyra Banks will co-teach an MBA class on personal branding at Stanford University. For two glorious weeks, she’s going to be “fun” but “tough” in the classroom, according to The Wall Street Journal: “If I see somebody not paying attention, I’m gonna call on them,” she said. Phones are forbidden in her presence unless you want to “tweet something I’ve said.”

As a first-time professor and guest lecturer with Stanford professor Allison Kluger, a former producer for Good Morning America and The View, Banks will advise about 25 grad students on crafting and protecting their personal brands. Also on the syllabus: livestreaming class projects on Facebook and YouTube (the horror?), creating a short video introducing yourself (kind of like America’s Next Top Modelauditions), and promoting yourself on social media (to presumably gain 13.4 million Twitter followers like Tyra).

The announcement comes after a flurry of celebrities attended Harvard Business School this summer, including Maria Sharapova (post drug-test fail), Channing Tatum (as a “live case” study, sure), rapper LL Cool J, and two NBA players. Banks, who completed a program there in 2012, is perhaps the perfect choice for Stanford: Who else is constantly perfecting her brand as a supermodel slash businesswoman slash TV executive all at the same time? She presided over 252 episodes of America’s Next Top Model; soon, she’ll host NBC’s start-up reality show Funded.

Kluger asked Banks to teach the Stanford class with her after watching her speak at a Stanford event, where Banks described cold-calling the CEO of Zappos for advice on starting her own company. The two will plan the course over the next few months until registration opens: first-come, first-served, no exams, and you can ask to take it pass/fail. What could be better?